Oct 23, 2017

Should definitely be worked on. Eventually the same stuff could be used to reverse engineer/terraform Venus.

When politicians talk about the Paris Climate Agreement, it’s usually framed in terms of restrictions on emissions for states and businesses. But the Paris Agreement wasn’t just an agreement to regulate — it was also an agreement to innovate. That’s because most experts agree that the world won’t be able to keep global temperature rise below 2 degrees Celsius, unless there’s a way to physically remove CO2 from the atmosphere.

A Swiss startup called Climeworks has made that their goal, developing the most advanced carbon-capture technology to date. VICE News went to Switzerland to see how the technology works and hear how the business plans to tackle climate change. Problem is, what Climeworks is doing isn’t cheap.

Jun 5, 2017

While flooding has caused mass evacuations and road closures in Texas and Louisiana, Californians are doing all they they can do make it rain. Last week, for the first time since 2002, Los Angeles County officials authorized cloud seeding with the hope that the technology will force the clouds in their region to produce 15 percent more rainfall.

Cloud seeding is a rain-making technique developed by Bernard Vonnegut (brother of Kurt in 1946. Essentially, it is the process of shooting silver iodide into clouds, which attract water vapors because it shares a similar molecular structure to ice. It then freezes and, when the ice becomes heavy enough and falls, it melts its way down to the surface as rain.

In Los Angeles, the Utah-based company North American Weather Consultants — hired for $55,000 a year — set up land-based generators in 10 locations in L.A. county. These generators shoot the silver iodide up with the hope that the created stormwater will fall in the dams and watersheds within the area.